Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Hello there, a MMO-champion first timer posting here after many a night's headscratching and screaming at my raid's druids for an innervate. I've been playing a holy priest for about two years, of which one year I spent "inspecting" the floors from Black Temple to Ulduar.

To get into the actual problem - usually, during even normal mode Ulduar encounters (let's not go to what it is like during hard modes), I find myself using everything I have (Shadow fiend, Arcane torrent, mana potion, Hymn of Hope) at least once a fight. I am a holy priest who is one Yoggy-hard mode away from her legendary mace but I feel pretty helpless in front of my major problem called mana. I'm often put in an important role of doing something significant and can't really lean back and relax or let my out-of-combat -regen kick in, and my healing style is, if you would call it, a bit "triggerhappy". I keep my ProMs on cooldown, and if I'm not Prayer of Healing one group or another, I'm throwing around a whole lot of Renews.

To help this problem, I have gotten my metagem changed, my cloak enchant changed (actually went back to Tailoring just because of this) and have been trying to heal less. But usually I end up just as OOM as I was before.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Originally Posted by Sissadora

I'm often put in an important role of doing something significant and can't really lean back and relax or let my out-of-combat -regen kick in, and my healing style is, if you would call it, a bit "triggerhappy".

Well I think you identified the problem, priest isn't a paladin manawise, I didn't get to your armory for some reason but with all the things you mentioned you shouldn't run oom any more than other holy priests.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

If you're having mana problems, your spec is the first place to look and you're missing out on some talents that could easily make a significant difference in Surge of Light and Healing Prayers. My suggestion, first, is drop the point in Martyrdom, it's utterly useless for PVE, that'll free up one point. Yes Inner Focus is nice, but I find that it just doesn't net me that much mana these days with the change to OOFSR regen, and so it usually just gets reserved for when I use Divine Hymn. Considering that you're lacking in more useful mana talents anyway, I'd go ahead and consider dropping that point as well. You say you like Renew, as I do, so keep those talents, but Healing Focus isn't very useful in a 25-man raid IME, so I'd also drop that talent (maybe keep one point if you dont' think you'd ever use Desperate Prayer, but I find that Desperate Prayer saves my life at least a couple times a night).

Also, I love Renew too, but I just find that the glyph isn't very useful because it's either going to be allowed to tick and top someone up anyway, or it's just going to be overheal. I'd consider switching that glyph out for Circle of Healing or, if you don't like that for some reason, Prayer of Healing. It might help some if you like to keep Renew on a lot of people because you won't need to refresh it as often and it will probably boost your throughput as well. So, try looking at a spec more like this:

As for gear, do you have any other trinket options? If you can get to Yogg on 25-man, the Spark of Hope is AWESOME and very easy to get from Auriaya in 10-man; you could even try PUGing some Naxx-10s and trying to get your hands on the Spirit-World Glass as well.

Switch your boot enchant to +18 Spirit; it's worth more regen than +6 MP5. And for your gemming, you seem to be a little too SP happy. You'll definitely see some mana improvements if you switch out a few SP gems for more SP/Int, SP/Spirit, or Spirit/Int gems.

I think with a bit of a spec change, switching a few gems for some more mana regen, and possibly getting a regen trinket, you should see a vast improvement in your mana regen.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Mana troubles is frankly the only problem holding holy priests in line. With infinite mana, a holypriest is a healing god of awesomeness.

But there are ways to manage mana, even in the world of patch 3.1.

Gear for manaregen
There is always some gear that is better than others for manaregen. Your primary options for regen-gearing is enchants, trinkets, weapon choice and gems.

A staff will always give more manaregen than a MH+OH combo. The staff will usually have less spellpower, but if you want regen, this is the way to go. Make sure to enchant it with wisdom instead of spellpower. Other enchants should focus on regen as well.

Trinkets offer you your largest potential for customization. I personally recommend a Spark of Hope + Darkmoon card: Greatness combo, but you can check out the trinket thread stickied on top of this forum to find one matching your healing style.

Gems - go for gems increasing int + spirit. You want both.

Specc and Glyph wisely
You might want to consider going deeper into the discipline tree. I personally went for the -10% cost to instant heals. It's lowering my output, but increasing my sustainability. You could go deeper, but that will cost you GS which I don't think is worth it. Anyway, fiddle around with talents, pick the ones lowering the cost of the spells you use a lot.

If you use flash heal as your primary goto heal, make sure to get the glyph of flash heal.

Use your cooldowns
Your regenerative cooldowns are meant to be used. I use Arcane Torrent almost on every cooldown. Love that ability. I usually try to use the shadowfiend in conjunction with Hymn of Hope - it'll grant you aresome manaregen if combined. And if you have the trinket from Naxx granting +300 regen (Spirit-world glass), time that with Inner Focus. I usually save my potion for emergencies though. Also - a Inner Focus + Divine Hymn is an awesome way of getting 8 seconds worth of manaregen.

But the main point is - cooldowns are supposed to be used. Sometimes you can squeeze off 2 shadowfiends in one fight. That's usually taking care of the mana issues. I don't use cooldowns often on trash, but there is rarely a bossfight where I don't use most of them.

Also: if you have multiple priests in your raid, make sure to coordinate Hymn of Hope. The spell explodes in efficiency if multiple priests cast it at the same time. Four priests using it at the same time equals full manabars to the entire raid.

Of course, raid composition matter too. Get in a group with a restoshammy, make sure you have replenishment and befriend a druid. I think you already do that.

Modify your healing style
But no matter what you do, a holypriest can easily cast spells for 2500-3000 MP5 if going all out. At best you will have around 650 MP5 from your gear, and over time around 250-350 more from your procs and abilities. You will run OOM fast if you go all out, that's in your job description.

The thing about holypriests is that you have to hold back most of the time; going all out is simply not sustainable. Let the other healers work their share too. Be "lazy" and proud of it; use smaller and cheaper heals like flash heal or renew instead of spamming prayer of healing. When the shit hits the fan you are the cornerstone of the healing team - don't blow your manabar on the small fry damage. What matter isn't whether you are on top of the meters - what matters is if you save people. And you can't do that on an empty blue bar.

Don't accept MT healing assigns
As a holypriest, your worst possible assign is as a MT healer. This will drain your manabar badly; fheal is too weak (usually) and GHeal is way too expensive. You can survive such a job by cancelcasting GHeals, but while that saves your manabar, it's an extremely wasteful use of GCDs. As far as possible, you should be the last person to get a MT healing assign.

Hang in there!
The mana issue will never vanish. Its the only thing keeping us in line. But you can remedy it a lot by thinking ahead a little, planning your cooldown use and conserving mana. And if everything else fails - keep in mind that sometimes it's worth letting people die, that saves your regen and teaches them to pay better attention to the green stuff.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Surge of Light and Mental Agility are a must if you're having mana issues. Drop some points out of test of faith and somewhere else, test of faith is not that useful 12% more healing on targets below 50% hp in raids is meh because everyone should be above 50% health at all times.

[23:43:22] [P] [85:Bowsjob]: If its between 2 holy pallys its gonna be a gear fight most likely

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Originally Posted by nwo

Surge of Light and Mental Agility are a must if you're having mana issues. Drop some points out of test of faith and somewhere else, test of faith is not that useful 12% more healing on targets below 50% hp in raids is meh because everyone should be above 50% health at all times.

Surge of Light, absolutely; free, instant Flash Heals are sweet for a little mana conservation and possibly regen. I don't, however, think Mental Agility is really worth it for Holy. The only instants that Holy will really be casting are Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Circle of Healing. Prayer of Mending is already cheap, especially with Healing Prayers, so that's not a problem. Even if you're Renew happy, like I often am, Renew doesn't make a huge dent in my mana unless I'm utterly careless with it. And Circle of Healing, yes, it's an awesome spell, but how often are you really casting it on every single cooldown? Maybe in a situation like Mimiron P2, but that's designed to burn your mana and you have plenty of recovery time afterward anyway. By far, the largest mana drain for me is Prayer of Healing, probably followed by Flash Heal, and neither of those is affected by that talent. I think considering that the OP only had one point in Healing Prayers and didn't have any points in Surge of Light, grabbing some points in those talents will make a much more noticeable impact on his mana than Mental Agility. I'd certainly say that he should at least try that (along with some of the other suggestions) first, see if he still has mana problems, then consider Mental Agility.

And I couldn't disagree more with saying Test of Faith isn't useful. Sure, theoretically, people should almost always be above 50%, but in reality that just isn't the case. A lot of the raid damage these days hits very hard and often puts the raid under 50%. That is, sure, it's not a flat increase like some other options, but it provides the throughput when it's needed most, and as a result can often save you (and other healers) some mana and GCDs.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Sissadora,

Without seeing some WWS/WoL it would be difficult to comment about how you heal. So I will comment on gear/spec.

Gear: Gear choice looks fine. However, if you have an aggressive healing style, like I do, I would replace every single gem to INT. I have about 3k more mana than you, which translates into a huge regen gap. Remember there are multiple %mana regen abilities that can effect you: Shadowfiend, HoH, MTT, Rapture(From Disco), Revitalize (from Druid), and the big kahuna Replenishment. True, you sacrifice some throughput, but I have over 3k SP fully raid buffed... so I have never found my throughput lacking.

Spec: The basics look fine... at least from a regen perspective. Some things I'd think about:

(1) IDK how often you use GH, but you have 13points invested in it: Imp Healing, Divine Fury, and Emp Healing(partially). I personally hardly ever cast this spell anymore. Without checking WWS/WoL, however, it would be difficult to surmise if these are good use of points.

(2) Spell Warding is the hotness for hardmodes. If you don't use GH, move your points from Divine Fury to Spell Warding.

(3) I like maxing out Holy Reach and SoL. You will notice a significant jump in your SoL procs with one more point... and a little extra radius on CoH/PoH can save lives in movement heavy fights.

(4) What percentage of your healing done is GH/FH? Depending on the %, Blessed Resilience can actually be a throughput upgrade over Emp Healing, which gives you two points to put into B&S. If you haven't played around with B&S before, its extremely useful when used properly. Of course, if you run with a Disco priest, I would skip it.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZfxkcfMqih0euqo
Try that build imo. I don't think many priests cast Greater Heal that often, but it depends on the person, assignment, and situation, so I don't see why you should put 5 talent points into it. 1 Point in guardian spirit is worth it imo. You get over 50 spirit from it (raid buffed) which is about 25 mp5 and about 13 sp.

[23:43:22] [P] [85:Bowsjob]: If its between 2 holy pallys its gonna be a gear fight most likely

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

shut up, you just ruined it. (and no, that wasnt sarcasm).

as for gear, the holy priest in our guild stacks mp5 and has 1k stam, int, and spirit self-buffed and has 408/683 regen unbuffed. afaik he doesnt have mana issues and with the huge mp5 buff thats inc. next patch, i'd try stacking it more if you havent tried it already. if all else fails, go disc. lol

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Here's a WWS report from our Ulduar run last night - XT, Kologarn and Auriaya hard modes. I think I experienced having a bit more mana to fiddle with after correcting my build and gem choices with the suggestions given and freely also raidhealed though I was put on MT duty on XT and Kologarn for example. Ugh.

Our disc priest is a bit shieldhappy, as can be seen.. Though what shocks me time after another is him being on top of healing done.

edit: and as to "all else failing" going disc is not an option really, we have a fulltime disc priest and they don't unfortunately stack with the shields. And while disc priest is of course about many other things than power word:shield, if Penance and Flash Heal were all I could do because our disc priest had already shielded everyone, it would be a boring life indeed.

I'm positively surprised at the quality of answers here. Thank you everyone for your time and constructive criticism! Keep those comments coming. Maybe this thread will be useful for someone else than me as well.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

I am looking at XT kill and you have A LOT of healing done by your Prayer of Healing and very little flash heals.
PoH by itself consumes shitloads of mana, but what CoH does is proccing a free Flash Heal via Surge of Light (which you didn't have last time I checked your armory).

With glyph of CoH and around 30% holy crit (majority of priests have around 30% crit) and with 1 point in Surge of Light you should have free flash heals every now and then and it really does register as a lot of healing and a lot of mana saved.

When I heal as holy (rarely) I avoid PoH as much as possible.

Also, I use SoL to stack Serendipity to have hasted PoHs, especially when something like Tantrum is about to happen. It's much cheaper than usual FH spam. You also use Renew as your "filler" spell a lot, where I prefer to Renew / PoM / FH the raid unless there are > 3 targets that need healing.
I also got a mod for Grid that tracks PoM on people so I don't tend to blow it on every cooldown.

RE: disc priest you got - seems to me he knows what he's doing. When healing, I'm 90% of the time Disc and I am shield happy so I shield as much as I can the whole time (I'm not just dead stuck on the tank healing).

But all these parses seem to include any shield as healing done, regardless of if it was broken or not by damage.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

I have a problem noticing when SoL procs - is there an option somewhere to make it more noticeable? Or do you use an option in some separate addon to announce that? I have an addon for my fury warrior's Slam!- proc, maybe I need to get something separate for Surge of Light as well.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

First of all i have to disagree with people who say gem INT, its not needed and not good, not even for Disc.
Secondly Indeed to whats said before, MT healing as holy is too demanding, especially without regen trinkets, have disc as offspec and swap to disc if your going primarly on MT.

Thirdly, get regen trinkets, this is whats killing you, a good regen trinket can be 10k mana a fight if not more, so you really should get hold of atleast one of those, Soul of the Dead or Spark of hope is good choises and availible to anyone, Sif's Remembrance is also ok if your not lucky with drops, also Show of Faith but yeah not availible to you

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Originally Posted by Sissadora

I have a problem noticing when SoL procs - is there an option somewhere to make it more noticeable? Or do you use an option in some separate addon to announce that? I have an addon for my fury warrior's Slam!- proc, maybe I need to get something separate for Surge of Light as well.

I'm using DoTimer for tracking SoL (and various other procs). I'll post a screenshot today when I get to it.

First of all i have to disagree with people who say gem INT, its not needed and not good, not even for Disc.

False. Int is godlike for discipline. It's been proven many times over, as it grants crit + larger mana pool. It's not even debatable. For holy int might not be as appealing as spirit but it's still great.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

Originally Posted by syanid

False. Int is godlike for discipline. It's been proven many times over, as it grants crit + larger mana pool. It's not even debatable. For holy int might not be as appealing as spirit but it's still great.

Not when you dont need the mana, so its a wasted stat, and even if you do need the mana better to use SoH or SotD and gem offensive stat, added benefit of this is also that you can easly swap trinket should not need the mana on a fight, which is most, usually use SoTD and eye myself, use SoH for 10man algalon, but thats pretty much it

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

I still disagree with you about disc part but we better take it to another topics since this one is not about what stats is better for disc. I'll keep gemming int / spellpower, depending on the fight and that's it.

Re: Holy mana management problems - or is it just me?

You must put 2/2 on SoL, apart from that is really hard to see why you go oom so fast without any kind of meter posted, all I can say is that with only 20% Holy crit and only 1/2 SoL you'll be going oom way more than usual